The Last Innocent Hour

by Margot Abbott

  “Am I a good guy or bad?” I asked facetiously, but he took me seriously. He had been leaning back in his chair, looking left and right, and when I asked my question, he leaned forward, regarding me intently.

  “That depends, kiddo.”

  “On what?” I said, taken aback.

  “On what you were doing going out with Colonel Heydrich of the Munich SS.”

  “I don’t see that that’s any of your business,” I said sharply. “You certainly are nervy.”

  “It’s my job. And the daughter of the American ambassador dating an important Nazi is news.”

  “I’m not dating him,” I said, hitting each word through clenched teeth. The waiter appeared next to me with a menu. I grabbed it from him and hid behind it. There was silence for a moment at the table. I lowered my menu-screen. David grinned at me.

  “Wanna beer?” I nodded, recognizing the peace offering. “Two beers,” he said to the waiter in English. “Know what you want to eat? Steak?” I nodded again. “Steak for both of us,” he said, “medium rare, with everything.” The waiter nodded and, retrieving the menus, retreated.

  “So if you’re not dating him, what was going on? C’mon, tell me. Let me get my facts straight.”

  “You don’t mean you’re going to write about me?” I asked nervously.

  “Naw, don’t worry. I just wanna know what my competition is like.”

  I looked at him for a moment. The thought that he was jealous of Heydrich rather delighted me, and I grinned.

  “Oh, God,” he said, “now I’ve done it. I’d recognize that cat-that-ate-the-canary smile anywhere.”

  “Tell me, David,” I said, nodding at the waiter as he placed two large mugs of beer in front of us, “what newspaper do you work for?”

  “I’ll answer, but I’m not through with the other subject, you understand. I’m just retreating for a while. I’m with the mighty New York Telegraph. Ever hear of it?”

  “Read it all the time.”

  “Sure you do, especially since you can’t get it over here. Smallest paper in the East. To give you an idea—I’m the European Bureau chief. As a matter of fact, I’m the European Bureau.”

  “Why are you in Berlin?” I asked. “And not Paris or London?”

  “Well, I think Berlin’s the place where the news is happening right now. I’ve only been here about a month, and I’ll move on when I need to. So, have you lived all over the world?” he asked, moving his arms aside as the waiter arrived with the food.

  For the rest of the meal, we talked about our childhoods and families. David had grown up in Brooklyn, a first-generation son of a hardworking immigrant family. He had gone to public schools and to City College in Manhattan, and his first newspaper job had been, classically, selling papers on street corners when he was nine. He loved the business, every aspect of it, and was poetically describing the printing presses of The New York Times, which he had visited once on a school outing, when the waiter arrived with the check.

  We had had many beers, more than David could pay for, and I wound up digging some money out of my purse. I didn’t mind. He was funny and bright and I liked his big brown eyes.

  We collected my fencing gear and the doorman waved us down a cab.

  “Do you always lug this stuff around with you?” David asked, as we struggled to get into the taxi. It was a smaller car than the first one we had been in—or seemed that way. Maybe it was the beer that took up the space.

  The drive went on forever, and I guess I dozed off. Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was being kissed, and someone’s hands were very busy about my person.

  “Hey,” I yelled, scaring David—and the taxi driver. “David,” I said to him in a shocked voice.

  “What? What?” he said, untangling himself from me and my foil, which was somehow mixed up in all of this. “What’s wrong, what are you yelling about?”

  “You took advantage of me,” I said. I had expected more of him.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said indignantly.

  “Yes, you did. You got me drunk and took advantage.”

  “You drank the beer. You asked for it, and you were the one who started making eyes—not me.”

  “I did no such thing,” I said in measured tones. I pushed my hair off my face. “Where’s my hat?” I squirmed to look behind me.

  “Here it is,” said David, tossing it in my lap.

  “Thank you,” I said evenly.

  “You’re welcome,” he replied in like manner. He sat against the opposite corner, as far away from me as he could get. We rode awhile in silence.

  “You mad at me?” I asked. I looked at him, but his head was turned toward the outside. “We’ve been friends for such a long time.”

  “Long enough,” he growled. “Is it because I’m Jewish?” he said in a low tone.

  “What?” I said, not sure whether to take him seriously.

  “Is that it? You don’t kiss Jews, just true-blue Aryan Nazi fascists, am I right?”

  “David . . .” I said.

  “Course, he’s tall and blond and I’m short and dark . . .”

  “Shut up,” I said, “just shut up. You’ve got everything wrong.” The cab pulled up to the iron gate in front of the house. “Go on in,” I told the driver in German.

  “Good German accent, too,” said David.

  “Shut up, and you’re not short and dark.” When the cab stopped in front of the door, I jumped out and rang the bell. Vittorio opened it immediately. “It’s me,” I said to him. “Can you pay for this? I’ll pay you back.”

  “Of course, Miss Jackson,” he replied.

  “And then, please, show Mr. Wohl into the kitchen, where I’ll be making some coffee,” I said grandly, leaving the men to sort out my fencing equipment.

  Vittorio brought David down the hall through the padded swinging door into the kitchen. When they entered, Frau Brenner stuck her head around the door and asked what was going on at this impossible hour of the night. I placated her and sent Vittorio off to his bed. Neither of them wanted to leave David and me alone—especially in the kitchen—but I convinced them everything was dignified and respectable.

  David sat at the long marble-topped table while I puttered around making coffee. I explained how I had met the colonel at the reception, and how I had felt sorry for him because he seemed to be so socially inept. David laughed.

  “Inept!” he said. “Boy, he’s inept all right. Like a killer shark is inept.”

  I didn’t answer and, putting the sugar bowl down in front of him, went to get spoons. When the coffee started to perk, David got up to take care of it. As we sat across from each other with our coffee, I asked him to tell me, please, what he knew about the colonel.

  “The SS is still a small organization, compared to the SA. The SA is huge, and those are the guys who fought in the streets, the guys who have been Nazis since the twenties,” he said, stirring his coffee. He had put three huge spoonfuls of sugar into it and a great slug of milk. “They want a piece of the pie, since they helped win it. There’s even been talk of Röhm ousting Hitler. And I’ve heard that both the army and Hindenburg hate that idea. Hitler they think they can control, but Röhm’s another matter.

  “Anyway, the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, hired Heydrich two years ago or so to start a security service for the SS. You know they started as Hitler’s bodyguards? Now they’re the elite, supposedly. Himmler’s keeping recruiting pretty select, but to be powerful he has to have a large organization. Anyway, the scuttlebutt says that Himmler is consolidating his power bit by bit. And Heydrich’s SD, the secret security service, is helping him do it.

  “The SS, well, Himmler and Heydrich, have already gobbled up the police force in Bavaria and most other states—oh, by the way, the Brown House is the Nazi party headquarters in Munich. Anyway, they’re involved right now in a fight with Goring over Prussia. If they succeed, Sally, that means your pal, Heydrich, will probably be the head of the security police of the entire count
ry. Including the Gestapo.”

  “But I thought Diels was the head of the Gestapo,” I said, wanting David to know I wasn’t entirely uneducated about German politics.

  “Fouf,” he said, blowing the sound out of his lips, “he’s on his way out. Be a wonder if he’s still alive in the morning.”

  I couldn’t believe he really meant that and I looked at him skeptically over my coffee cup.

  “These boys are tough, and they’re only gonna get tougher the more power they get. Always remember that, kid, when it comes down to it, what the National Socialists stand for is not jobs or militarism or stupid, half-baked racial notions, but how much power they can get. And why?” He shrugged. “Who knows? I guess it makes ’em feel good or something.” He took a sip of coffee.

  “You know who they really remind me of? Dillinger. Capone. This whole country’s gonna be like Chicago during Prohibition.”

  “Want a cookie?” I said and got up before he could answer. What he had told me disturbed and troubled me, although I was glad for the information. Especially about the colonel. Then I laughed, thinking about how I had botched up our date. I got a round tin of English tea biscuits out of the pantry and, prying the top off, set it down before David.

  “What are you giggling about?” he said, reaching out and touching my arm. I sat down and told him about my giggle fit at Hitler’s portrait. He laughed along with me, although he was surprised that Heydrich hadn’t been angry with me.

  “Maybe he was being diplomatic, because of who I am,” I said.

  “Sure, I guess that’s it,” he said, clearly not agreeing with me. He stuck his wrist out to look at his watch. “Jesus, look how late it is. I’d better take off.”

  I was sitting on the table at an angle to him, and when he stood up he was very close to me. He hesitated a moment, but he turned away.

  “David,” I said. He turned back. “Are we friends?” I asked.

  “Sure are, kid,” he said with a smile. He picked his hat off the table. “Ah, I’m sorry,” he said, studying the brim. “About the misunderstanding in the taxi.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “And, anyway, like I said, you’re not so short,” I added. I hopped off the table before he could answer. “Ohh,” I moaned, “I can feel my fencing muscles coming awake.”

  “At this hour! You’d better get them to bed, along with the rest of you. I’ll call you, all right?”

  After I had walked him to the front door, I went back to clean up our tea party, and I wondered what my father would say if he knew I had entertained a man there at such an hour. A Jewish reporter straight from New York, too. And one who had kissed me, and kissed me seriously, in the taxi. Gentlemen didn’t do that, especially to a girl they had met only hours before.

  I turned the kitchen lights out and walked quietly in my stocking feet through the hall to the stairs. The house was absolutely silent and I stood for a moment at the foot of the staircase listening to the deep silence.

  I liked David and when it came down to it, I had liked his kisses too. I just hadn’t liked being, well, grabbed when I was, well, drunk, like that. Carrying my shoes, I hurried up the stairs and sneaked past my father’s room.

  I talked to Sydney about David the next day as we window-shopped on the Kurfiirstendamm. She knew him and happily approved, although, as she said, he was a little gauche.

  “But,” she said, “he’s intelligent, if uncultured. Let’s go in here,” she suggested. We were in front of a small but very elegant lingerie shop. “He’s also Jewish.” She looked at me sideways, waiting for my reaction.

  “I know. He told me.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t think so.” I stared at a lime-green satin garter belt. “Looks very uncomfortable, doesn’t it?”

  “Pretty, though. I’d buy it and keep it to dress up my lingerie drawer.”

  “I don’t think it matters—his being Jewish,” I said, returning to the subject. “At least, it shouldn’t. I keep wondering what my father would say. You know, an American man living here, studying, I think, came to him at home the other day and asked that Daddy intercede on behalf of a German friend of his, a Jew, who has been in prison for ages and has never been charged with anything.”

  “How ghastly.”

  “Daddy can’t do anything, of course, because the poor guy in jail is German. But he was feeling very frustrated. I think his American sense of right goes beyond any feelings of prejudice. He said something like, ‘It’s not right that they keep that fellow locked up without a trial, even if he is a Jew,’ something like that.”

  “‘Even if he is a Jew,’’’ repeated Sydney. “Well, that’s a concession, I suppose. My father won’t even go that far. He is extremely anti-Semitic and makes no excuses about it.”

  “Are you?”

  “No. Yes.” Sydney sighed. “But I am less so than my parents. I’ve had Jewish friends, and I don’t think they have ever met anyone Jewish socially.”

  “Well, now we know David.” I nodded toward the shop. “Let’s go in, shall we?” We pushed open the door. “David’s rather like Brian, isn’t he?”

  “What?” said Sydney, absentmindedly fingering a pale-blue pair of step-ins. “Do you still wear these?” she asked.

  “Not since I was twelve. Brian’s very intelligent and somewhat uncultured, isn’t he?” I said, smiling at her.

  “Touché, Fraulein,” she said, “Oh, look at this slip. Isn’t it lovely?” As Sydney told the salesgirl hovering in front of us her size, the door opened and two new customers entered. I saw the other salesgirl look up, and smile, an embarrassed sort of smile. I turned. The two new customers were young men. They were in SS uniforms. The salesgirl went up to them.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” she asked.

  I watched surreptitiously from behind a mannequin that wore an ivory camisole and no head. I was very interested in the SS men, after meeting Heydrich and then hearing so much about the pure evil of the organization. They didn’t look evil, just arrogant. And well groomed.

  “Heil Hitler,” one man replied, raising his arm from the elbow and casually letting it fall. The other man remained somewhat apart, his back to the store. Perhaps he felt uncomfortable in so feminine a shop. I turned back to Sydney and the peach silk slip she was looking at. She wasn’t sure she liked the wide bands of lace on the hem and the bodice.

  “The color goes with your hair,” I said to her. The two SS men moved to the other counter, which, considering the smallness of the shop, was close enough for us to hear them. The one man was being very arrogant, almost rude, to the salesgirl who, it seemed to me, was doing her best to serve them.

  “I’ll take it,” said Sydney to our salesgirl, who took the slip off to wrap it. “Good lord, what are they doing here?” she whispered, for the first time becoming aware of the SS men. We wandered over to the counter near the door, away from them, and studied a display of hosiery. “They’re awfully good-looking, aren’t they?” she said under her breath to me in English. “I have heard that they must submit a full-length photograph of themselves in a bathing suit when they apply. Can you imagine?

  “Who are they?” Sydney asked the salesgirl, who came up with her change and wrapped slip.

  “The rude one is a prince,” said the salesgirl in a low, excited voice. “The Kaiser’s youngest son, I think. He has been here before, buying presents for his girlfriends. The other one I don’t know.”

  The salesgirl went ahead of us to open the door. As Sydney went through first, I took one last look at the two men. The door swung shut behind me and I was on the sidewalk walking beside my friend before what I had seen, or rather, whom I had seen, had sunk into my brain. Sydney looked at me.

  “What is it, Sally?” she asked, putting her hand on my arm. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I think I have,” I said. “I think I have.”

  I turned to walk back to the shop. “I have to find out.” We were only half
a block away, but by the time we had walked back, the young men were gone. We could see them down the block, their black shoulders and peaked caps bobbing above the crowd.

  For the first time in a very long time, I thought of him, of Christian; I was almost certain the second man had been he. Then the thought struck me, that if he was in the SS, surely I could find him. And I knew just the person who could track him down for me.

  LUNCH WITH THE GENERAL

  CAN YOU MEET me at Horcher’s around one?” I asked Sydney. “I want to celebrate. I’ve finished everything. The house is done and I’m going to treat myself to a big, expensive lunch. You too, if you can come.”

  “I’d love to,” said Sydney. “Lady H-G and the ambassador have left for a holiday, so no one is nipping at my heels. And when are you going to invite me over to see the finished house?”

  “We’ll talk about it. I guess I should plan some parties, although Daddy did say he didn’t want to get too social.”

  Horcher’s was a famous restaurant on the corner of the Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden. In warmer weather, there were tables set up outdoors, but now, in the winter, window panels surrounded us. It was a lovely spot, right in the middle of a busy and fashionable street, yet protected and warm.

  Sydney arrived just as I was being seated at a table next to the window. She wore a very chic black suit I’d never seen, and we happily discussed it, and the silly, tiny hat she had on, stopping our conversation only long enough to order lunch. She had fish and I ordered veal, and after a short exchange with the waiter, she ordered us a bottle of wine.

  I complained that I could never wear hats the way she could, and she suggested that I could if I cut my hair to a more manageable length. Although I was not convinced, I enjoyed being absorbed in such feminine concerns.

  We had finished our lunch and ordered coffee and were deep in a discussion of what sort of party I should give, both of us agreeing on an small housewarming to begin with, when Colonel Heydrich, accompanied by a woman, walked past us outside and entered the restaurant. Sydney saw my expression and turned to see what I was looking at. We were far away from the door, and Heydrich did not see me sitting dumbfounded in front of my coffee cup. The headwaiter led him and his companion to a table close to ours.